Dr. Scott E. Parazynski, who was selected by NASA for the astronaut corps in 1992, will oversee the medical screening and on-ice care of all personnel in the National Science Foundation's United States Antarctic Program, UTMB has announced.

UTMB was selected earlier this month to manage the medical operations for the program, working for the National Science Foundation as a subcontractor for Lockheed Martin's Antartic Support Contract.

"This is a tremendous opportunity for UTMB," Dr. David L. Callender, president of UTMB, said in a statement. "We are no strangers to the ice, having operated there for the last decade, providing critical medical support on occasion. This new agreement represents an expansion of the work we're already doing."

Of the appointment of Parazynski as the director of the new center, Callender said: "His remarkable career and professional accomplishments lend themselves to this new endeavor."

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Under the agreement with Lockheed Martin, UTMB's Center for Polar Medical Operations in Galveston will manage health services at the three stations operated by the U.S. – McMurdo Station, Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station and Palmer Station – as well as numerous seasonal field camps and two marine research vessels operated year round.

In addition to providing medical staff, equipment and supplies on the continent, UTMB will also manage the required medical screening of the roughly 3,000 people who work at U.S. stations in the Antarctic each year. Another 300 people who 'winter over' at the bottom of the world, when weather conditions and continuous darkness make travel impossible, also require psychological evaluations.

"Antarctica is the most remote and extreme place on earth to live and work," Parazynski said in a statement. "It's our responsibility and privilege to assure those who are traveling there are physically up to the challenge and have the medical support they need once they get there."

Parazynski began mountain climbing in his teens, and has climbed in the Alaska Range, the Cascades, the Rockies, the Alps, the Andes and the Himalayas. On his second attempt to scale Mount Everest, on May 20, 2009, he became the first astronaut to stand on top of the world. Additionally, as part of a NASA-sponsored expedition to the high Andes, he conducted a scientific dive in the summit caldera lake of 19,700-foot Licancabur volcano, the world's highest lake.

Parazynski is also a commercial, instrument, multiengine and seaplane-rated pilot with over 2,500 flight hours.